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''iBwt Sotottli ani natkx |lca^ctl]." 



OR 



NEW ENGLAND'S 



3int)clrtrl)iir$s to tbe |)i(iuim ifailicvs. 



A DISCOURSE DELIVERED 



IN THE FIRST CHURCH IN HAE^ 



OR 

NEW ENGLAND'S 

luhlit^hess to tlje |il|iim Jatljers. 

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED 

IN THE FIEST CHURCH IN HARTFORD, 

^ Sabbath Morning, May 8th, 1859. 



BY JOEL HAWES. 



H --' 



HARTFORD: 

HUTCHINSON & BULLARD, 

1859. 



Ft? 
Mas 






Hartford, May 14, 1859. 
Rev. Dr. Hawes : 

Dear Sir : — The undersigned, your friends and parishioners, having 
enjoyed the pleasure of hearing your discourse delivered Sabbath 
morning, the 8th inst., on the indebtedness of the New England peo- 
ple, and of all of New England origin, to their Puritan ancestors, for 
whatever they hold dear in their civil, social, literary and religious 
institutions, respectfully ask a copy of the same for publication ; and 
they remain, sir, your obedient servants: 

Thos. S. Williams, Julius Catlin, 

Charles A. Goodrich, Wm. W. Ellsworth, 
Henry A. Perkins, Horace Hooker, 

Joseph Trumbull, Elizur Goodrich. 

William Hungerford, 



To Hon. Thos. S. Williams, Rev. G. A. Goodrich, and others : 

Gentlemen : — ^Always happy to gratify the wishes of my friends, 
I cheerfully commit the sermon which you request to your disposal, 
hoping that the sentiments it contains may be commended by your 
approval, as well as by their intrinsic truth and importance, to the 
love and practice of some who did not hear the discourse, but may 
read it. I remain truly your friend and servant in the gospel, 

J. HAWES. 



SERMON. 



JOHN 4 : 38.— Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors. 

If there is a people on earth to whom these words 
can be applied, with singular and emphatic truth, that 
people are the descendants of the Pilgrims, the inhab- 
itants of our own New England ; of our own State of 
Connecticut, and of this our favored city of Hartford. 
It is in this apphcation, I propose to use the words in 
the present discourse. Other men labored, and ye are 
entered into their labors. Who were the men, we may 
ask first, into whose labors we may be said to have en- 
tered ; the fruits of whose self-denials and toils we are 
enjoying? They were among the choicest and best 
men in our father land. They were raised up and 
quahfied of God to accomplish a great mission. They 
were of the pure old Saxon race ; a race universally 
distinguished for its inteUigence, enterprise, and indom- 
itable love of civil and religious liberty. They were 
trained up and fitted for the great work they were to 
do, not in self-indulgence and ease, but in the hard school 
of adversity, self denial and suffering. They were 
rocked amid storms of severe discipline and trial ; God's 
usual method of preparing instruments for the accom- 
plishment of any great good in the world. In a word, 
the men into whose labors we are entered, who laid 
the foundations of our prosperity, and tilled and sowed 



6 

the fields whose rich harvests we are reaping, were men, 
not corrupted by the pride of high life, not enfeebled 
by luxury, not darkened by ignorance, nor degraded 
by vice, nor hardened by selfishness ; but were men in 
the full and vigorous possession of all the best attri- 
butes of our humanity ; of clear intelligence, of tried 
virtue, of devoted piety, of large and generous sympa- 
thies for the good of our race, and of a self denial and 
courage, in doing the will of God, which nothing could 
intimidate or overcome. They were, for the most part, 
from the middle walks of life, though among them 
were not a few of distinguished rank, of high intellect- 
ual culture, and of large attainments in all the most 
useful departments of knowledge. In their own coun- 
try they formed but a small minority, and were cruelly 
persecuted and oppressed by a tyranical court, and a 
corrupt hierarchy. They were Puritans, Nonconfonn- 
ists. They had imbibed the spirit and embraced the 
principles of the Reformation, and they wished to see 
that spirit and those principles carried out in reforming 
the English Ej)iscopal Church from the large remains 
of popery which were yet retained in her organization 
and forms of worship. They claimed the right of 
studying and understanding the Bible for themselves, 
and of worshiping God according to the dictates of 
their own consciences. They could not submit to be 
obliged to observe rites and ceremonies of human ap- 
pointment, and which they believed to be contrary to 
the scriptures, and of pernicious influence on the cause 
of religion. For these and other like causes, their names 
were branded as evil. They were denounced as schis- 
matics and heretics. TJiey were subjected to innumer- 
able privations and wrongs. They were persecuted and 
imprisoned as felons, and many suffered even unto death. 



Finding no peace and no rest in the land of their 
birth, they resolved to leave their country, their friends 
and their all, and seek in other climes and in other 
lands, the enjoyment of those rights and privileges 
which were denied them at home. But all the hard 
discipline to which they were subjected was only a ne- 
cessary preparation for the great work which they were 
destined to accomplish. It matured their characters ; 
it established them more firmly in their principles, gave 
them a deeper love of liberty and religion, and quali- 
fied them the better for the sufferings and toils which 
they were to endure in working out for us the goodly 
heritage which we enjoy. Our pilgrim ancestors were 
chosen in the furnace of affliction; by trials God pre- 
pared them for trials. Driven out from their country 
and their kindred, they crossed the mighty deep and 
came to these distant, unexplored shores. And what 
did they find here ? A vast unbroken wilderness, in- 
habited only by savage beasts and more savage men. 
" They went out from one fire into another fire that 
seemed ready to devour them. What the wolves of 
despotism and church tyranny had left undone in one 
hemisphere, the wolves and savages in another seemed 
ready to finish." 

But they brought with them great hearts; they 
were actuated by noble principles ; their object was 
high, was benevolent, was christian ; and they were pre- 
pared to do and to suffer all that was necessary for its 
accomplishment. There were no other men in all the 
world qualified to do the great work which the Fathers 
of New England were appointed to do. They were 
Puritans and Protestants of the noblest stamp. They 
had thrown of^ while in Europe, trammels of corrupt 
and worn out institutions, both civil and religious, and 



8 

they came here bearing in their bosoms the sacred love 
of liberty and religion, and prepared to lay the foun- 
dations of a new order of society, based on principles of 
equal and enlightened freedom. They were exiles for 
religion and liberty ; they were men disciplined by 
misfortune, cultivated by opportunity of large expe- 
rience and observation, equal in rank as in rights, and 
bound by no code but that of religion and the public 
will as accordant with religion. Such were the men 
whom it should be our pride to call our ancestors ; the 
men who toiled, and labored, and prayed, and died on 
the soil which we inhabit, and the fruits of whose labors 
are spread, in such rich and varied abundance, on which 
ever side we turn. Let us notice a few particulars in 
respect to which, it may be said we are entered into 
the labors of these men. 

1. The development and defense of great princi- 
ples. This was a part, and a most important part of 
the mission of our pilgrim ancestors ; and our obliga- 
tion to them in this respect is greater than most of us 
are aware, or are willing to acknowledge. It requires 
more reflection than falls to the lot of many to under- 
stand the value of great principles, either in govern- 
ment or religion ; to comprehend their far-reaching in- 
fluence on the well-being of society, and the extreme 
difliculty with which they were first struck out and 
established. Principles which are now well understood 
and admitted by all; principles which lie at the foun- 
dation of all our institutions, and which we should no 
more think of parting with, than of parting with 
life, were, only a few centuries ago, profound mys- 
teries, hidden from all mankind, and were brought out 
and established only by slow degrees, and at an almost 
infinite expense of labor and suffering. This is true 



especially of civil and religious liberty. Our fathers 
gave the first practical example of these principles ever 
witnessed in our world. They saw them struggling 
into light in the old country, burdened and buried be- 
neath a vast mass of superstition and ignorance, and of 
civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. They entered warmly 
into the conflict in defense of them ; they loved and 
embraced them with enlightened minds and devoted 
hearts, and were prepared, at any cost, to extend their 
light and spread their influence over the world. They 
believed that every man has a right to read the Bible 
for himself, and to worship God according to its teach- 
ings ; that no human authority has a right to control the 
conscience in matters of religion, and that all govern- 
ment, being designed for the many, and not for the few, 
should originate in the free choice of the people, and 
be administered according to the will of the majority. 
These were new doctrines in the days of our forefa- 
thers. They were the abhorrence of the reigning pow- 
ers, both in Church and State, and fiercely persecuted 
and opposed as they were, both by the priesthood and 
the court, they were maintained and defended only by 
the Puritans who preserved and perpetuated their in- 
fluence to bless future generations. Hence the remark- 
able confession of Mr. Hume, that " amidst the absolute 
authority of the crown, the precious spark of liberty 
had been kindled and preserved by the Puritans alone ; 
and it is to this sect the English owe the whole free- 
dom of their constitution." To this same sect, as I have 
said, our Pilgrim ancestors belonged, and having em- 
braced the great germinating principles of liberty in 
their native land, they brought them hither to this land 
of their future home, and here planted them in a fresh 
soil, " above the great growth of underweeds, which 

9 



10 

otherwise in Europe would have overpowered them." 
While their ship was yet hovering on the coast, and 
before they had disembarked, they appointed a day of 
thanksgiving to that God who had conducted them 
safely across the ocean, and formed, on that day a civil 
compact with each other, tJiat they should be ruled ly the 
majority. In this latter act they founded the liberties 
of a free representative republic. Yes, in the act done 
on board the Mayflower, which brought the exiled 
Pilgrims to these shoi'es, we find the germ, the spirit of 
all our free, civil and religious institutions. The gov- 
ernment of our towns, of our churches, of our States, 
and of our whole united country, is only the carrying 
out of the principles on which our Pilgrim fathers 
acted before they set foot on the rock which bears 
their name. These were principles of pure republi- 
canism, of republicanism in church and state. Of how 
great importance they are, and how essential to the 
improvement of man, and the progress of society, may 
be learned from the rich and abundant fruits they have 
yielded in this land of our birth, and from the mighty, 
regenerating influence which they are spreading abroad 
among the nations of the earth. If it is any privilege 
to live under a government of our own choice, any 
blessing to enjoy the inalienable rights of life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, to be free in mind, in 
conscience, in life, controled only by equal laws, guard- 
ed by equal justice, sitting each under his own vine 
and fig tree, having none to molest or make afraid, — 
if in all this there is any privilege, any blessedness, 
any good, let us not forget that we are indebted for it 
all to the great principles which were developed and 
established by our Protestant, Nonconformist forefa- 
thers ; by the men who, amid toils and privations and 



11 

, sufferings, at the recital of which the heart sickens, 
came here, two centuries ago, to plant the tree of lib- 
erty, under the shadow of which we, their descendants, 
so securely and so happily repose. In this respect, then, 
it may be said, other men labored, and we are entered 
into their labors, — the development and defense of 
great principles. 

2. We may notice as another illustration of the same 
truth, the establishment of excellent institutions. The 
institutions founded here by our fathers, and in the 
midst of which it is our privilege to live, were the 
natural, and we may say, the necessary result of their 
principles. As they believed that all men were born 
free and equal, and are entitled to equal rights and 
privileges, as members of the body politic, so it was 
only carrying out these views, in their practical results, 
when they set themselves to establish free schools, free 
churches and free forms of civil government. And all 
this they did, simultaneously with the clearing away 
of the forests, and the erection of their own humble 
dwellings. They came here, impressed with the great 
idea, that they were to live for posterity ; that they 
were to lay in this newly discovered land, the founda- 
tions of many generations. And they applied them- 
selves to the work with astonishing zeal, self-denial and 
success. No sooner had our fathers provided shelters 
for themselves and their families from the wintry blast 
and the savage foe, than they began to care, to plan, 
and to labor for those who should come after them. 
Within eight years after the settlement of Massachu- 
setts, Harvard College was founded ; and in a very 
short time the system of free schools, the glory of New 
England, and then a perfect novelty on earth, was in 
full operation. Wherever a new settlement was begun. 



12 

there a school house and a church were at once erected, 
and a minister settled, and often two ; and the means 
of learning and of religion competently supplied. 

The ecclesiastical and civil government established 
by our fathers was free and republican. They sought 
to form their churches after the primitive model, free 
communities of free men having the right to choose 
their own pastors, and to regulate their own concerns, 
in accordance with the general principles laid down in 
the New Testament. ' They would not allow the office 
of Bishop, nor the form of Episcopal government over 
the churches, because they believed them to be unau- 
thorized in the scriptures, and of injurious tendency 
to the cause of religion. They chose rather to leave 
with each church, as Christ has plainly done, the right 
of governing itself, of electing its own Bishop, of ad- 
mitting and excluding its members, and of transacting 
all its own concerns, responsible only to the great Lord 
of churches. So it was in the beginning of the gospel, 
and it was always regarded by our fathers as a great 
and prominent object of their mission here to bring 
back the primitive form of church government ; to es- 
tablish churches, as nearly as circumstances would 
allow, after the Apostolic pattern. 

Their civil government, like their ecclesiastical, was 
free, was republican, — securing exclusive privileges to 
none, but extending to all the enjoyment of equal 
rights, and the protection of equal laws. In this States 
the people, the whole people were accustomed, for a 
time, to meet in common assembly to elect their rulers 
and frame their laws. It was thus they formed and 
adopted the first written constitution of government 
ever known in the world. Afterward, they adopted 
the elective principle, and chose delegates in their re- 



13 

spective towns to whom were committed the cares and 
responsibihties of government. And this custom, with 
no interruption, has been continued to the present 
time. And now what do we see ? Ourselves and our 
fellow-citizens, throughout this land of our fathers, sur- 
rounded by institutions civil, social, literary, charitable 
and religious, such as never blessed any other people 
on the earth. Our system of free schools, together 
with the academies and colleges that have from time 
to time, risen up and spread themselves over our goodly 
heritage, bring the means of education within the 
reach of all our children and youth. Our churches, 
now increased to some fourteen hundred in New Eng- 
land, and to over twenty-five hundred in the country,* 
retaining the doctrine and polity of our fathers, are 
diffusing the light and the blessings of the gospel 
among the people at home and abroad, and gathering 
into their bosoms midtitudes of souls every year, pre- 
pared unto glory. In the mean time, we have numer- 
ous benevolent societies and humane institutions, hos- 
pitals, infirmaries, asylums, retreats, for the relief of 
human suffering and wo. And over all is spread the 
broad shield of a free, elective government, securing 
to all common rights, and common privileges. Whence 
now the various and excellent institutions that bless 
this land of our inheritance ? We created them not, 
we found them established and in full operation when 
we came upon the stage, and all our days we have been 
enjoying the blessings that flow from them. We were 
born into them, as into the atmosphere we breathe, and 
their Ught has always been shedding itself upon us like 
the cheering light of the sun. Whence came they? 

* Congregational year book for 1858. 



14 

Other men labored and we have entered into their 
labors. See this illustrated, 

3. In the goodly heritage provided for us, and pos- 
sessed by us. I include, of course, in this inheritance, 
the institutions before referred to, and also the great 
principles wrought out and established by our fathers. 
I include in it, too, the bequest of their great virtues ; 
the many illustrious examples of piety, of disinterested 
patriotism, and devoted love of their species that have 
come down to us from those who have lived and toiled 
here before us. But I include, likewise, something 
more. We look abroad over these hills and vallies, and 
this outspread land of ours, the land of the Pilgrims ; 
the dark, unbroken wilderness has disappeared, the 
thick forests are cleared away, the wild beasts are 
fled, the savages are gone, and far and wide we are 
greeted with the monuments of civilization and of the 
arts, and of social and domestic comfort. We see cul- 
tivated fields, beautiful gardens, splendid public edifices, 
rich private dwellings, harbors constructed along our 
rivers and bays ; marts crowded with commerce ; fac- 
tories teeming with various products for the conven- 
ience and comfort of life ; roads and canals threading 
all parts of the country, afibrding every facility of in- 
tercourse and conveyance, and bringing those who are 
most distant from one another into near and intimate 
neighborhood. The journey which it cost the first set- 
tlers of this city two whole weeks to accomplish, is now 
passed over in some seven or eight hours. There are 
no more woods to be traveled through, no more rivers 
to be forded, as when Hooker and Stone came here 
with their company; no more lurking Indians to be 
guarded against, nor prowling beasts to be feared. — 
Whence all these labors that have been performed for 



15 

us, and the fruits of which are so richly poured into our 
bosoms ? Who prepared the place where we dwell ; 
who spread out the broad tent that covers us ; who 
cleared the hills and the valleys of their forests, and 
made them as a garden for us to occupy ; who made 
our roads, built our bridges, reared our public edifices, 
and provided for us those nameless and innumerable 
conveniences and privileges which distinguish our lot ? 
The answer must be again, — other men have labored, 
and we are entered into their labors. 

We have added something, it is true, by our personal 
efforts ; but b}^ far the greater part has been done for 
us by others. It is affecting to consider to how great 
an extent we are indebted for our high and peculiar 
advantages to the labors of men who lived in other 
days. Nearly all that is of any great value in our 
inheritance has descended to us, directly or indirectly, 
from the virtues and toils, from the prayers and efforts 
of ancestors that now rest from their labors. I always 
feel this, with new and vivid impression, whenever 
I travel through the country, and witness the mon- 
uments that everywhere meet the eye, of the indus- 
try and enterprise, of the patriotism and piety of 
those who have lived and toiled in this land of our 
inheritance before we had our being. Look where we 
may, we are continually met with objects which remind 
us of the fact that other men have labored and we are 
entered into their labors. 

4. I mention another circumstance illustrating this ; 
the great and invaluable inheritance provided for us by 
our ancestors, has been preserved and transmitted to 
us, at a vast expense of toil, of treasure, and of blood. 
How much of privation and suffering it cost our fathers 
to work out in their native land the great problem of 



16 

civil and religious liberty, has already been intimated. 
But their toils and sufferings were not at an end when 
they fled from persecution and oppression at home, 
and came exiled pilgrims to these shores, seeking here 
an asylum for the sacred principles of freedom and re- 
ligion. They had everything to create here, but their 
own great virtues and principles and high aims. They 
had to fell the forests, to build their houses, to erect 
their sanctuaries, to open their roads, to break up and 
sow their hard fields ;'in a word, to form and establish 
everything that constitutes society, or contributes to 
individual and social enjoyment. And all this they had 
to do in the midst of difficulties and dangers of which 
it is not easy for us to form a conception. Famine, 
pestilence, war soon pressed heavily upon the few fee- 
ble adventurers who first landed upon these shores- 
The native tribes, who at first welcomed them to a res- 
idence in their territory, soon regarded their increasing 
prosperity and strength with envy and jealousy, and 
combined for their destruction. Scarcely a year passed, 
during the first half century after the settlement of 
the country, but our fathers were obliged to adopt 
measures to repel and to punish the depredations of 
the Indians ; and often they were called to carry on 
terrible wars with them. Subjected to alarms by day, 
and terrors by night, they were obliged to cultivate 
their fields and pursue their ordinary labors with 
arms by their side to repel the assaults of the lurking 
foe. Every village was a garrison, and every house- 
holder a soldier ; and the sanctuaries where they met 
on the Sabbath to worship God, were wont to be guard- 
ed by armed men. Numerous bloody wars our fathers 
were thus compelled to carry on with their Indian 
enemies, while laboring to lay the foundations of our 



17 

^prosperity. Their infant institutions were founded and 
sustained in troublous times, and have come down 
to us, in maturity and strength, at a great price of 
toil and suffering and life. Why need I speak of the 
old French war, as it is called, when for seven long 
years, terror and distress spread all along our frontier 
borders, and the blood of our fathers flowed freely in 
defense of the inheritance we now enjoy ? Or why 
should I speak of the still more terrible war of the rev- 
olution, when, during eight long years, the powerful 
fleets of Great Britain hung upon our coasts, and her 
veteran troops were martialed in our territories, and 
quartered in our cities ? Those were dark times for 
our country ; the struggle in both instances was long 
and fearful, and our fathers nobly met the crisis. Em- 
barking their lives, their fortunes, and their all, they 
launched forth upon the perilous enterprise ; main- 
tained their rights and their liberties; achieved our 
independence, and secured for us our inheritance. And 
now, in the height of the prosperity to which we have 
risen, our rights secured to us by a 'constitution of our 
own adoption, and guarded by a government of our 
own choosing, surrounded on every side by blessings 
more various, more numerous, more abundant, than 
ever fell to the lot of any other people, what shall we 
say, as we look back and trace the causes that have 
secured and transmitted these blessings to us, in the 
midst of conflicts and trials and dangers of every 
kind ? How manifest it is that for all that distinguishes 
our condition, for all that enriches our inheritance, for 
all that cheers our path, or brightens our prospects, we 
are indebted, under God, to men who have lived and 
labored here before us. I can pursue the illustration 
no further ; but in the development of great principles, 
3 



18 ^1 

in the establishment of excellent institutions, in pro- 
viding for us an invaluable inheritance, and in trans- 
mitting it to us, at an immense expense of labor, of 
treasure, and of blood — in all these particulars, the 
words of our text find 'a most peculiar and emphatic 
application to ourselves, — other men labored and we 
are entered into their labors. 

What practical lessons now should we derive from 
this view of our subject : 

1. We are bound' to cherish the memory of those 
into whose labors we are entered, with affectionate 
gratitude and profound respect. It has become fash- 
ionable, in certain quarters, to depreciate the worth of 
our Puritan fathers ; to speak lightly of their virtues 
and achievements, to magnify their failings, and to 
carp at their principles and institutions. But this can 
arise only from ignorance, or prejudice, or from that 
inattention and levity of mind that are incapable of 
perceiving and of estimating true virtue and real worth 
of character. I pity the American, especially the New 
Englander, who can contemplate, without emotions of 
grateful respect and esteem, the venerable men who 
planted these colonies and founded our institutions. 
Theirs were indeed what the great Burke calls " se- 
vere and restrictive virtues," and which, he truly says, 
" are at a market almost too high for humanity." But 
just such virtues were demanded for the age in which 
our fathers hved, and for the great work which they 
were called to do ; and just in proportion as they had 
fallen off from such virtues they would have been 
unfit for their work, and had bequeathed to us a less 
valuable inheritance. The truth is, no people under 
heaven ever had greater occasion for gratitude to God 
in remembrance of their ancestry, than the people of 



19 

. New England, and especially I may say, of Connecticut. 
The men who came here two hundred and twenty- 
three years ago the coming month, and here laid the 
foundations of the civil and religious institutions of our 
City and State, were among the noblest and best men 
that ever lived. Truer examples of stainless integ- 
rity, of high public spirit, of stern self-denial, of heroic 
self-sacrifice and devoted piety, were never witnessed. 
And the same essentially may be said of the great 
body of the first settlers of New England. They were 
men of God, fleeing from the wrongs of the old world, 
and coming here to plant the principles of freedom and 
religion. The monuments of their virtues and their 
toils are before us and around us, and we are bound 
to hold their names in grateful remembrance ; to speak 
of their principles, their excellencies and their works 
with filial respect and love. A Puritan ancestry should 
be our pride, as Puritan principles should be our joy 
and hope ; and no stronger mark of degeneracy can 
any one exhibit than to traduce the memory, or speak 
slightingly of the men from whose labors and prayers 
we are reaping such abundant fruits. 

2. We are bound to adhere, firmly and perse- 
veringly, to the principles of our ancestors. Those 
principles they learned from the Bible, and they laid 
them at the foundation of their institutions ; and from 
them has grown up a state of society which, with all 
its imperfections and evils, does, undoubtedly, include 
a larger amount of good, of the elements of individual 
happiness, and of social, intellectual and moral progress 
than is anywhere else to be witnessed on earth. This 
is not said from any improper partiality, but it is sober 
truth, and is confirmed by the observation of intelligent 
travelers. " Were I ever so unfortunate," says Mr. 



20 

Lyell, the eminent British geologist, who published a 
hook of travels in this country in 1845, " as to quit my 
native land to reside permanently elsewhere, I should, 
without hesitation, choose the United States for my sec- 
ond country, especially New England, where a popu- 
lation of more than two millions enjoys a higher average 
standard of prosperity and intellectual advancement, 
than any other population of equal amount on the globe." 
But let it be remembered, that all which thus dis- 
tinguishes New England, and gives to her people a 
right to this high character, is owing to the principles 
brought here by our fathers, and on which they founded 
the polity of our churches and the government of the 
State. These principles are free, are republican in their 
character and tendency. They assume that all govern- 
ment, both in church and state, should proceed from 
the people, and be for the people ; that equal rights 
and privileges should be secured to all the members of 
the body pohtic, and that a State to be prosperous and 
happy must be furnished with the means of intellectual 
cultivation, and of religious privilege and improvement. 
These principles, I repeat, lie at the foundation of all 
our prosperity. They are the fountain head of the 
intelligence, the enterprise, the thrift, and of the mo- 
rality and religion, which distinguish and bless the 
people of this portion of our country. Let us then 
adhere to these principles firmly, both in church and 
state. Better ones cannot be substituted for them. 
They have worked well now for more than two centu- 
ries, making this portion of our land as the garden of 
God, compared with most other parts of it; and a bet- 
ter service we cannot do for our children, than to en- 
lighten them in the knowledge, and initiate them in 
the love of these principles ; and a better inheritance 



21 

we cannot bequeath to them than is found in the pos- 
session of these principles, and in the institutions based 
upon them. 

3. We are bound to do all we can to perpetuate 
the goodly heritage we have received from our fathers, 
and to extend the blessings of it to all the destitute 
portions of our country. As other men have lived and 
labored for our good, and we are enjoying the blessed 
fruits of their toils, so ought we to live and labor for 
those who are to come after us, and for all who dwell 
in this land of our inheritance. What had been our 
condition now, if our pilgrim fathers, or the men who 
first came to this city, had been contented to live and 
care only for themselves? This goodly heritage of 
ours, now replete with civil, social, literary and re- 
ligious blessings, would have been a Sahara, a moral 
waste, overrun with ignorance and sin, and teeming 
with anarchy and violence. But blessed be God, our 
fathers came here with a different mind. They were 
men who feared God and loved the Savior, and loved 
the souls of their fellow men ; and in the true spirit 
of patriotism and religion that glowed in their bosoms, 
they looked beyond their own individual comfort and 
personal interests, and with their earliest and latest 
energies, sought the good of their posterity, and of all 
who should dwell in this land of their residence. And 
to-day we, and hundreds of thousands of living immor- 
tals, to say nothing of countless multitudes, who in 
succession have died and gone to their rest, from this 
land of the Pilgrims, are debtors, great debtors to them 
for the wise forecast and benevolent care they showed 
in laboring for the good of generations then unborn. 
Let us acknowledge our indebtedness, and strive, 
to discharge it by doing for others what has been 



22 

done for us. We are bound to do this in grati 
tude for the rich and abundant blessings which we 
have received from our venerated fathers. We are 
bound to do this, by the command of our blessed Mas- 
ter, and by the love we profess to bear to his precious 
name. We are bound to do this, by the good will which 
we cherish for our country, and by all the desire we 
have for its future prosperity and rising greatness. We 
are bound to do this, in fine, by the deplorable destitu- 
tion of the means of grace and salvation, which marks 
the condition of growing millions of our population, 
especially in the western and newly settled portions of 
our country. I cannot go into particulars. But re- 
member that in sending the gospel, with its institutions 
and means of life to the joeople in the new and fast 
rising States of our land, you are doing for them just 
what our fathers did for us ; and with God's blessing 
on your efforts, you may make them your debtors, 
just as we are now debtors to the men who labored here 
before us, and into whose labors we are entered. 0, if 
our Pilgrim fathers had been permitted to behold, in 
vision, the ultimate fruits of their labors ; to see the 
goodly scene which now spreads itself over the smiling 
hills and valleys of New England, and the hundreds 
of thousands of its population who, morning and eve- 
ning daily, and at this sacred Sabbath hour, are paying 
their homage to the God whom theij loved, how would 
they have rejoiced in the prospect, and with what warmer 
zeal and brighter hope, have applied themselves to the 
great work they were commissioned to do ? And, my 
brethren, it is in the power, as it is the duty, of those 
who have entered into the labors of these great and 
good men, to carry out the good work they so happily 
begun; to create other New Englands in the far 



23 

distant portions of our own country ; to spread over 
them the charms of an intellectual and moral fruitful- 
ness, and thus furnish occasion for those who shall live 
there centuries hence to say of them, — other men la- 
bored and we are entered into their labors. And surely 
it is a commendable ambition to desire to bear even 
the humblest part, in effecting so great and so blessed 
a work ; to wish to be remembered hereafter as among 
the benefactors of our race ; the agents of blessing and 
making happy those who are to Hve when we are dead.' 
It is expected you will have an opportunity, this week, 
to do what you think duty demands of you, to aid in 
sending a portion of the blessings you so richly enjoy 
to your brethren in distant and destitute portions of 
our land. You will be called upon for your annual 
contributions for home missions. You will meet the 
collectors, I trust, with a welcome smile, a benevolent 
heart, and a liberal hand. What you do for this great 
and good cause will not impoverish you, though it may 
enrich unto eternal life many a poor fellow immortal 
now perishing for lack of vision. In deciding how 
much you ought to give, just ask this one question, — 
" How much owest thou my Lord ?" and to settle that 
question take an inventory of your blessings of various 
kinds ; then inquire whence you derive them and to 
whom you are responsible for the use you make of 
them. May God enable us all so to act as stewards of 
his bounty, that we may at last give up our account 
with joy and not with grief 



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